Envisioning the Church and Keeping Children Safe in Cambodia
€11,100

Bishops’ Appeal granted €11,100 to Tearfund Ireland for the Chet Tai Muay programme, meaning ‘being one at heart’.

Tearfund Ireland partner Cambodia Hope Organisation (CHO) will strengthen local churches and Christians to be catalysts for sustainable change in their communities, helping them in areas of health, self-help groups, anti-trafficking, domestic violence awareness, food security, agriculture and animal husbandry.

The goal is to benefit 22,489 people in year one as follows:

●       Church leaders from 15 villages will attend workshops to learn about child protection, facilitation skills and other practical topics to take back to their villages and teach. They will then be able to use their skills and gather resources to implement projects to help the whole community. These projects could be home gardening projects, agriculture training, family planning or business training. Following the training, the leaders will visit each other and exchange ideas.

●       220 members of Christian Core Groups and Self Help Groups will directly benefit from the initial ‘envisioning’ stage, they will learn about identifying the needs of their communities.

●       Money will be provided to help start projects in 20 villages to improve livelihoods. This could include establishing a ‘seed bank’ in the community, where farming households can borrow seeds to plant crops and repay the bank so others can use the seeds in future e.g. one farmer borrows 1 kg of corn seeds, but repays 1.5 kg to the bank once able to do so. This results in the growth of the seed bank for other community members as well as income generation.

●       A five year Community Vision will be developed in 40 villages.

●       40 partner churches and 15 village leaders will improve their knowledge of leadership, not only in their churches but also in their communities. Through studying the bible they will learn their mandate to be salt and light in their villages and help change attitudes towards the church.

●       Seven partner staff will learn how to deliver training on calling the church to action, and on how to train people on child protection and other topics, such as agriculture, to help the communities.

The overall goal is for the Local Christian Community to be self-reliant, self-sustaining and meeting the needs of community people and promoting the wellbeing of children in their community.